Being a junior lawyer is hard enough without worrying about whether a robot will steal your job. This certainly appeared to be a pressing concern among the 300-plus solicitors who attended a recent Law Society conference on robots and lawyers.

But Obiter hopes they will be reassured to hear Mark Edwards, head of technology-enabled legal brand Rocket Lawyer, predict that robot lawyers won’t be a reality any time soon.

Debating whether artificial intelligence will fail to have a radical impact on the legal profession at a separate event, the Rocket Lawyer chief was pitted against IBM director of emerging technology Peter Waggett, a former rocket scientist. We’ll still need ‘human lawyers’ for now, Edwards reckons – as to ‘inhuman’ lawyers, he failed to express a view.

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